How far will they go to avoid a President Trump?

by Kit

These protests are totally organic. Just like they are everywhere else that elects a leader the CIA doesn’t like.

Overturning or ignoring Trumps victory poses a very real risk of massive riots and civic unrest. Would the Powers That Be really be willing to go that far?

Shortly after the Brexit referendum I wrote this article, positing that the UK might undergo its own version of a “Color Revolution” in the wake of an unpredicatable and (from an establishment POV) unwelcome election result. The undermining and circumvention of the UK’s exit from the European Union is an ongoing process. Trump’s election may well add fuel to that fire.

However, no matter the seismic shake-up that Brexit delivered this side of the pond, the election of Donald Trump last month is bigger. A lot bigger. Brexit was one issue, Trump is – theoretically – a reversal of years of policy designed to shape the world a certain way. As such, the backlash is bigger and possibly a lot more dangerous to the concept of democracy.

It’s a little-known fact, outside the United States, that the Presidential Election is not, in fact, decided by the popular vote. Rather the popular vote is there to demonstrate the will of the people to the Electors who make up the Electoral College – the Electoral College Vote (on the 19th of December) will decide who will be President. In the previous 44 Presidential elections the EC vote has followed the result of the popular vote, but there are no rules saying that they MUST do so. This will discussed frequently and at increasingly high volume over the coming week. It has already been the subject of various articles, and several hashtags with aspirations of viral success.

First there was Jill Stein’s petition for recounts in key states – this has been shut down by courts, and never received much press attention in the first place. One suspects that the last thing Clinton’s campaign would want is a detailed look at the polling records (there was a lot of gossip about undead voters, and democrats bussing in unregistered voters).

The media hysteria on this issue is out of control. Not a single paper, from The Guardian, to the Washington Post, to the New York Times, has seen any evidence of hacking at all. Russia always denied it. Wikileaks always denied it. And yet we are subject to a series of “reveals” and “scoops” which simply stenographically report what the CIA is saying…as if some guy saying there is evidence is the same as evidence. Given the ridiculous, puerile nonsense about “fake news” recently…this could not be more ironic.

The question becomes: what will happen if the Electoral College decide to install Clinton in the White House? Or declare there needs to be a new election?

There has been a lot of theorising that Obama and his backers will take a third term rather than let either Trump or Clinton take office. Or that he may have to use his emergency powers to declare martial law. If the EC throws out this election result, he may be forced to do just that.

One can also see the across-the-board condemnation of Russia’s actions in Aleppo, war crimes, massacres, attacking hopitals… as an attempt to undermine Trump’s policies and his authority. If Putin is Hitler and the Russian military is the SS, how can normal, decent, civilised people even contemplate ‘getting on’ with these barbarians? Aleppo is being disgracefully and cynically used as a weapon in the war against Trump and the possibility of any relationship to Russia that isn’t based on military and economic confrontation. Good cannot shake hand with evil.

I suppose that the US are supplying the Iranians and Iraqis with special bullets, mortars and shells that do not kill civilians?
All is quiet on the Mosul front. no civilians killed only the bad guys, and gals

All is quiet on the Mosul front because the terrorists got paid off, took a free passage to Raqqa, hooked up with their mates and went south to take Palmyra. All without the US CENTCOM, intelligence, political or media noticing. As If to say “merry Christmas Mr Putin, love from the outgoing administration!”

The reason Trump is ‘controversial’ with the liberal/conservative Washington consensus has precious little to do with sex or racism, biggotry or misogyny. Trump’s real crime is that he isn’t really a ‘normal’ politician at all. He’s not really even a proper Republican, he’s just used that label to get himself elected. He’s rich and pro-business, that’ normal, so are the rest of them. Only his rhetoric doesn’t bow towards the normal consensus, like his policies don’t. Fundamentally the problem with Trump is that he isn’t a supporter of attempting to topple Putin from power using sanctions and violence. It’s simply way too risky and starting WW3 seems like an odd way to go about securing the interests of the United States. In other words Trump isn’t a neo-con and he doesn’t believe in the Washington consensus about the democratic crusades to free the world from tyranny using the US Army and the Islamists to do it. That’s why the liberals, the left and the conservatives don’t trust Trump and which is why they don’t trust the American people either.

What if this really has nothing to do with Trump, in the sense that — that ship has sailed. The really dangerous thing is the trove of leaked documents themselves. Clinton has been very very low profile since the election; it doesn’t feel like this is a serious attempt to get her in via some alternate means. The aim seems to be to sully the documents by calling them Russian propaganda and anyone who looks at them seriously Russian stooges. That’s possibly rather cheering — an elite clique who thought they were untouchable are scrambling to get ahead of events. Not, any longer, to keep hold of power but to escape the consequences of not holding it. If they can construct a narrative that suggests that if Trump uses the power he soon will wield in pursuit of any of the revelations in the documents, it’s proof that he is the errand boy of the Kremlin, well: there is a chance they can evade the ignominy they know ought to rain upon them. This might not be the masters of the universe in action but a bunch of scrambling scoundrels fleeing the premises and throwing smoke bombs behind them as they go.

I agree with your broad thrust; that for America’s ruling class the game now is one of containment. As I commented in a reply below to michaelk, “undermining Trump and/or steering him (rewarding desired behaviour and making it very difficult for him to progress with undesired behaviour) are safer options for America’s ruling class”.

On Russia I sense a complexity that may reflect divisions within that ruling class. On the one hand we’re seeing all this Putin bashing over Syria, the election, sports doping. That would certainly square with your take (and michaelk’s) about creating a climate where Trump couldn’t effect real rapprochemont. On the other it would seem rational to some sections of the ‘deep state’ to take on China before Russia, given that from Washington’s PoV both are threats to be combatted by all means necessary sooner or later. If I’m right, and there really are serious splits within the American ruling class, then this one is still hard to call. I’d expect clarity – over whether Russia or China are to be presented by “our” media as Arch Demon – to come early in the new year, and with it an indication of which faction is winning out.

It seems to me that no-one really knows what is going down at the moment. In as much as has been allowed, we the people have taken the globalist Atlanticist pack of cards and thrown them into the air (US election; BREXIT; Italian referendum etc.) How they may fall, no-one knows – but you can bet that as they fall they will be re-stacked against us.
In the meantime, what we are seeing is a lot of horse-trading, posturing and factionalisation as the real pawnbrokers of power re-adjust and cross the floor. The vultures are fighting among themselves for the continuation of their share. Is that restructuring enough to result in a genuine revolution? I do not think so – too much apathy at the grassroots and too much vested interest at the top. Besides, Soros has already played that particular card (the Colour Purple revolution; the recounts) and it appears spent.
Infighting will continue until the elites realise that they are still going have the pick of the carcass. The Goldman Sachs/Rothschild billionaires @realDonaldTrump has chosen will concoct a Plan B – by which the vultures will probably allow a few scraps to fall to the populace. The GOP naysayers will be paid off; the Clinton Coup CIAers will be purged; the Electoral College will be brought into line; then ‘T Rex’ Tillerson will be free to plunder the Arctic with the Russians and ‘Mad Dog’ Matthis will do what he is told to do – which will probably involve killing lots of foreigners.
After January 20th, I expect to see a sleight of hand adjustment to the deceit – but no real change. Under a different veil, the rape of America – and by extension the rest of the world – will be continued. Anyone who expects any real change from the system of failure will continue to be failed. One day we may wise up and rise up and do something about it.

“However, no matter the seismic shake-up that Brexit delivered this side of the pond, the election of Donald Trump last month is bigger. A lot bigger. Brexit was one issue, Trump is – theoretically – a reversal of years of policy designed to shape the world a certain way.”

A reversal? With a cabinet made up of Goldman-Sachs and Generals? No. It is not a reversal at all, only in the sense that Reagan was a reversal of Carter.

Basically, this is a Tea Party Presidency that was anticipated by Pat Buchan’s 1996 campaign. If Kit has some other more positive notion of what Trump stands for, she should spell it out.

‘In most elections, the Electoral College has elected the candidate who received the most popular votes nationwide, except in four elections, 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.’ Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)
‘Despite 157 instances of faithlessness as of 2015, faithless electors have not yet affected the results or ultimate outcome of any other election for president and vice president.’ Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector
The one occasion members of the electoral college went against their state vote outcome – 1836 – the US Senate eventually voted in support of the President and Vice-President elects.
To overturn the 2016 result would constitute a constitutional breach of profound proportions.
Is the US power elite prepared to do this for a shabby Clinton couple or a do-nothing individual like Obama?
It would rip away all pretence that the US is any kind of democracy.
Are they ready for that?

Getting elected on a minority vote is pretty much par for the course in a number countries. When was the last time a government in the UK was elected by a majority? Well, I think that it was 1935 with the election of a national government, which was, in fact, a coalition of Tories and the rump of the Labour party. Every subsequent election in the UK has returned a government elected by a minority of the electorate. Even the Nazi’s didn’t get an absolute majority in the last election in Germany in 1933, and Hitler himself was appointed Chancellor by Bismarck, not elected.

Bear in mind also that almost half the electorate in the US didn’t bother to vote. Which says a great deal.

The political system isn’t going to intervene to stop Trump becoming president, that would be too overt and cause an awful lot of problems so soon after the election. It would convince Trump’s supporters and millions of others, not least the people who followed Sanders, that the ‘democratic’ system was in fact ‘rigged’ and the country ruled by an out-of-touch elite that had contempt for the people.

The alternative is to undermine Trump’s authority, legitimacy and credibility, linking him and his cronies to all manner of scandals, so that he becomes a ‘lame duck’ president even before he takes office. A president has an awful lot of moral power when he first takes office and is most effective in the beginning, thereafter his power begins to wane, usually, at least in the modern era. Trump though, is a different kind of president, like he was a different kind of candidate and he might decide to do things differently and tear up the rule book, like appealing directly to his supporters to come out and help him fulfill the mandate they gave him. If he was serious about creating a movement to take back the government, this would be the way to proceed. He may have won the election, but he hasn’t toppled the elite from power in Washington. The election was easy compared to that. If I was Trump, I’d go for it.

I’m inclined to agree. Undermining Trump and/or steering him (rewarding desired behaviour and making it very difficult for him to progress with undesired behaviour) are safer options for America’s ruling class – some sections of which may in any case be behind Trump, for instance over preferring to take on China before Russia.

One aspect of all this is the self-serving credulity of ‘liberals’ wanting November 8 overturned because the CIA, an outfit they’d rightly mistrust in other contexts, has “concluded” Russia meddled. Another is their childish inability to see beyond their Trump-must-go-at-any-cost stance. Their rage blinds them to how dangerous such a move would be: a surefire recipe for blood on Main Street America, and the rise of fascism. I mean the real kind, not the right wing populism Trump represents.

What’s really instructive/ morbidly amusing is watching “Liberals” being led through ideological figure-eights by a banana-republic-type strong man (HRC) , masquerading as a “Progressive,” with logical results: they’ve managed to reanimate the most famously Right Wing American movement of the mid-20th century! If you’d have told me, back when I was a High School student, in the 1970s, that not just the Gubmint but also natural-fibers-wearing “Liberals,” would be looking for Russkies under every bed, in my lifetime, I wouldn’t have believed it! Even Joe McCarthy’s ghost is confused!

Oh dear! The main export by Caliphate of Chaos and Kingdom of Genocides has been returned from overseas. Color revolutions and regime change has been returned from overseas (Syria comes to mind) right back to sender(s). Well, start your civil wars and we (the rest of the world that is not “international community by your standards) will cheer all sides and if needed send them some arms. What goes around – comes around.

This is an attempt to de-legitimise Trump. There is no constitutional way that he cannot be elected. If the Electoral College fails the question goes to the House which votes by state on the question- Trump would be an easy winner.

“Trump is – theoretically – a reversal of years of policy designed to shape the world a certain way.`
In a way you are correct- he is no neo-con. But in a more important sense far from being a reversal of a policy designed to empower corporations he is the apotheosis of Chamber of Commerce power. And his ideology of de-regulation and privatisation is just the logical conclusion to a trend that is very old.
The fact that he was elected by workers who saw him as a business leader and hero in the marketplace, puts him in the direct line of Babbitry. Business bullshit, flim flam and real estate speculation- besides which Apple Pie is an exotic dish from far away.

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